


love you with all the grace of a tumble down the stairs

by marauders_groupie



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bellamy is infatuated, F/M, Raven is awesome, TW: mention of childhood abuse, soulmates (kinda)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-17 02:32:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11266110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauders_groupie/pseuds/marauders_groupie
Summary: They do the love thing all wrong but it's no wonder because she's a shooting star on a reverse proportional trajectory, and he is a self-made hero the skies love to hate.Or:How a threat to kick his ass makes Bellamy fall in love with Raven Reyes. How they screw it all up. And fix it again.





	love you with all the grace of a tumble down the stairs

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly don't even know.
> 
> Title is from [my poem](http://sunsetablaze.co.vu/post/161109168169/i-could-love-you-in-such-a-cherry-sweet-way-our).
> 
> Enjoy! <3

The bomber jacket hung off her too thin frame and Bellamy was in love.  
  
She was all fire and rage, of course, and it made him want to laugh. How predictable, having eyes in a room full of people only for the girl who threatened to kick his ass.  
  
"That's Raven," Clarke explained, sliding her fingers down the beer bottle. "Finn's ex."  
  
It made something in him choke and he nearly spat out the beer he was muddling in his mouth.   
  
Raven - and even her name was fitting as he watched her grin ferally at Jasper after winning a round of darts - looked like someone too full of life to be only partially loved.  
  
"I know, I couldn't believe it either. She's -" Clarke grasped for words and Bellamy laughed when Raven whooped, ordering another round.  
  
"A star. She looks like a star."  
  
And it wasn't that she was Hollywood beautiful or had an aura of mystery about her. It was just how she made the dim bar seem a little brighter, like there was a glow she couldn't stop from escaping.  
  
Clarke nodded, smiling. "That's about right, yeah." A moment passed and then she was on her feet. "Want me to introduce you?"  
  
"We-"  
  
Bellamy didn't get to finish, to say that they've already met, because Clarke started waving and calling for Raven, all animated and chipper.  
  
There was a second in which he, as she strode over, lights reflecting metallic off her leg brace, thought about running away. But she was grinning at Clarke, an arm already flying towards her shoulders and Bellamy was intrigued.  
  
Last time she pulled a switchblade on him but now she was a hug person.  
  
"Raven, this is my -"  
  
She cocked her head at him with something feline in her expression, something sharp and drawn back. "We've met, yeah. Bellamy Blake. Nice to see you've still got teeth."  
  
The way she said wasn't threatening, just a joke he could laugh at, something he could cut his fingers on.  
  
Clarke choked on thin air but managed to press out, "You know each other?"  
  
"You could say that." He was grinning, too. "Raven said she'd kick my ass, bash my teeth in and then cut off my -"  
  
"Bygones." She waved a hand at him and then stuck it out. "I'm horrible when I lose. Raven Reyes."  
  
"Bellamy Blake."  
  
"I really am glad about your teeth, though. It would be such a shame to see them gone from that pretty face."  
  
Bellamy knew a challenge when he saw one so he just raised an eyebrow and Raven, for her part, smirked like she know it was already a done deal.  
  
*  
  
When he kissed her in the parking lot, her breath tasting like beer she wrapped her lips around and that one cigarette they shared, Raven moaned into his mouth.  
  
And when she pulled him on top of her in her dark bedroom and flipped them over, no regard for the brace or the creaky mattress, Bellamy laughed.  
  
In the morning, it was his shirt that hung off the frame of her body, just one dark shoulder peeking out. He planted a kiss on her warm skin and she made him coffee.  
  
Of course it wouldn’t last.   
  
*  
  
He wasn't completely surprised that she never called back. There was something about that night and the following morning - an edge you could feel in the air. The intensity of it wasn't of the slow and savoring kind, it was the kind last chances and last moments had. Taking all you could get before you had to leave.  
  
That didn't mean that he was happy about it and so he found himself thinking about Raven more often than not. Buying cereal in the corner shop, thinking about whether she'd prefer Cheerios over Count Chocula, whether she liked sun or rain best, coming up with a hundred little things and mythologizing her in a way you could only mythologize someone you never got the chance to actually know.  
  
Her bomber jacket haunted his dreams and that bravado of hers - spitting blood and teeth and daring the universe to hit her harder.  
  
So he found a little of himself in her, so what?   
  
It was not a crime, and yet he felt like he had been caught with his fingers in the metaphorical pie.  
  
"Honestly, you should just call her," Clarke said, shrugging over another beer. This was what they did - they moonlighted as the frequent patrons of their local bar whenever they weren't busy trying to finish art school in Clarke's case, and grad school in Bellamy's. "No harm in trying, right?"  
  
"She'd just tell me to fuck off."  
  
"True. Or she'd fuck you again."  
  
He toyed with the leather bracelet Octavia gave him as he said, "I don't give a shit about that."  
  
It was as if he'd said that he had suddenly developed wings and a strong urge to fly.   
  
"Are you, Bellamy Blake, _in love_?"  
  
He rolled his eyes. "Definitely not."  
  
"But you could be?"  
  
"That's a shitty question, Clarke. I don't even _know_ her."  
  
He knew she tasted a little like gasoline, a little like danger. Cherry pie, sour at first and sweet later.   
  
But he didn't want to mope, or hope.   
  
The stars on his wrist, peeking from under his bracelet, teased him anyway.  
  
*  
  
He saw her again in the bar he was working in during the weekends. For a second, she looked like she was going run away as far as her legs took her, eyes widening as she noticed him.  
  
And then she stayed, relief Bellamy didn't even know he could feel embedding itself into his bones, a light, fluttery thing.  
  
"Rum and coke," she said and tapped her knuckles at the counter.   
  
There was something about her that seemed to dare him to ask but he was just glad to see her. This myth she'd become in her absence didn't even come close to the real girl.  
  
So he gave her the rum and coke and waited, wiping the counter like it's suddenly developed mud stains in the lull of the afternoon.  
  
"So," she started, eyes fixed to the side of his head like she'd burn through it. "About that night - "  
  
"What about it?"  
  
"It was a good night."  
  
Bellamy smirked. "Just good?"  
  
And to that, she grinned, that bit of feral sneaking in where dare stood. "Okay, it was really good."   
  
For a moment, she toyed with her glass, the remnants of rum coke sloshing around and teetering too close to the edge when she angled it towards him.  
  
"I'd like to do that again sometime."  
  
Bellamy smiled despite himself. "Sure, we can arrange that."  
  
So he took her home after his shift, offering a hand to help her down from her chair and earning a glare.   
  
It was different, this time around.   
  
His keys jangled as he locked the door behind them and Raven stood in the doorway to his kitchen, hands shoved into her jacket pockets.  
  
She hadn't kissed him on the ride over. They hadn't even talked. All they did was stare at the road in front of them, like neither could work up the bravery.  
  
Sex was easy. Sex was just skin and heat and some laughter, too, like when he'd knocked his head against the wall and she bared the column of her neck to ridicule him. They could both do that. For Bellamy, it was just patching up holes that still made his bones ache.  
  
But this?   
  
This, he thought, neither of them had experience with.  
  
"Nice place," she said at last. The neon lights filtering through the window cast a red glow on her features, making her seem sharper.  
  
He didn't mind one bit.  
  
"Thanks. It's been mine since - - well, shit," he breathed out, running a hand through his hair and remembering, "ever since I'd been a kid."  
  
Too much information. Talking to Raven Reyes was dancing on the edge and it sent a thrill through his bones, knowing that just one wrong word would get her on the other side of the door.  
  
Had all the people he had loved felt the same way about him?  
  
But she only nodded. "Cool. Any embarrassing baby pics?"  
  
"Just the ones with my nose stuck in a book, really."  
  
Raven snorted. "Of course. Clarke did tell me you were a nerd."  
  
"Is that a problem?"  
  
"Not at all."  
  
And this time, there _was_ something in her voice. Lower, huskier.   
  
It only took her three strides and then her hands were on his neck, his flying to her hips like muscle memory. How easy it was to forget all that he had wanted to ask. How easy to forget that he didn't just want her skin.  
  
Too easy.  
  
And when he splayed her on his bed, taking his time mapping every inch of her body, Raven pulled on his hair, asked,  
  
"What's gotten you so slow?"  
  
"Are we in a rush?"  
  
A smile. "No."  
  
"Then let me do my thing."  
  
She laughed again, that roar of hers, and then she gasped. Tasted something like Pacific salt water and musk.   
  
He kissed her again and again and kissed his way between her breasts, down her ribs, stumbled across the raven pendant she always wore, forgot that he should care about it, and kissed her for as long as he could until they were both tired and she, with sweat trickling down her temple, said that she'd forgotten how good it was with him.   
  
She sang praises of him with fingers digging into his back and Bellamy smiled into her shoulder, licked away the salt, smiled everywhere but into her face.  
  
At 3am, she climbed onto the fire escape and pulled him out, too. He'd have gone to sleep if it weren't for how lazy suddenly her movements became, how dopey and sated instead of jerky, instead of a match striking fire.  
  
"I love this," she said and looked to the city. Neon lights replaced stars and Bellamy found that he didn't care at all. "It's different this late at night. More human."  
  
They popped open a Coke and she told him about meeting Clarke with her legs on the fence, spraying condensation everywhere.  
  
And Bellamy had seen the embers on her calf before - of course he had.   


But it wasn't until she wrinkled her nose laughing to something he said that it struck him so deeply.  
  
It wasn't a matter of belonging - his stars, her embers. It was an outdated concept, soulmates. No guarantee of actually being good for each other.  
  
But the pendant was still swaying between the slopes of her breasts and if not embers, then the raven would have been a sign that this was what he couldn't have.  
  
Bellamy pulled her in for a kiss again and they didn't talk. This understanding was beyond words.  
  
*  
  
Raven was not his soulmate, Finn was hers, but they still wanted to try again - Bellamy wanted to try again.   
  
He fell in love non-linear, in moments and tastes.  
  
Because she and he had twin hungers and it was so easy to slip into it - being with Raven felt like second skin. Like, _look at this guilt, look how I rose above it. And I might be choking on salt water but I'm still singing. God, I'm still singing_.  
  
There was resilience in it, too, pure spite like blade between her teeth. When she laughed with abandon it never came easy and Bellamy got that, he _felt_ that. It carried more weight than the mountains he thought he was bearing.  
  
But Raven laughed anyway - the invincible girl she was.  
  
He fell in love in his room, Raven wrapped in a duvet with all that messy hair and sparkling eyes peeking through the fluffy mass.  
  
"Whatcha doin'?"  
  
Of course she made him laugh, of course she made him drop his work and kiss her again. Mornings with her slipped to softness so easily.  
  
He fell in love on a sweltering summer day, Raven licking her lips, stained with cherry soda, as she sat across from him in the diner.   
  
He told her a joke no one had ever laughed at and she snorted into her drink.  
  
She was a shooting star on a reverse proportional trajectory; starting from the rock bottom and rising up.  
  
And he could see that it took a toll on her, every bit she shared.  
  
"I wanted to be an astronaut," she told him once, after another round, their backs sticking to the sheets during a heat wave that rendered the city sluggish and them irrational.   
  
Bellamy was staring at the ceiling and so was she. The glow in the dark stars he stuck to it when he was eight still hadn't fallen off entirely.  
  
He looked at her and she didn't meet his eye.  
  
"My mom used to tell me that no one from our neighborhood made it to space and I guess she was right in the end."  
  
Her fingers found her leg just like his lips had found the scar in her back a little earlier. "I just wish I'd seen the stars up close, that's all."  
  
"I know."  
  
She was back to her brazen the next morning, laughing when Clarke saw them with Raven's hand tucked into his back pocket. Everything was alright and everything was set on fire each minute he spent with her but he still choked on something inside him, his instinct to run just as strong as hers.  
  
This was why he could never stand someone in his bed when morning light came:   
  
No one understood so it was better to not even try. Echo had frowned at him when he asked whether she'd cry at his funeral.  
  
No one could see the blood on his hands that had always been there, the one he could never wash off. Octavia falling into the wrong hands in foster care, his fault his fault - -  
  
His fault completely.  
  
So who could ever learn to care and not tiptoe around all of that which made Bellamy who he was?  
  
It wasn't tragedy, it was a fact of life.  
  
And Raven - for all of the walls she put up - was the only one who did not say "I am sorry" when he told her.  
  
*  
  
There were sunny days, of course. She stole his glasses and left selfies in his phone to remember her by, and Bellamy brought flowers to her garage once -- threw them in the trash and brought her beer next time.  
  
They sunbathed in her backyard, amidst the scraps of engines and a few discarded exhaust pipes. He helped, along with Clarke and Jasper, when she finally decided to empty out the house of her mother's belongings.  
  
Nothing looked good as blue paint across her cheek and a smile that could light up the whole neighborhood.  
  
"I could sell the house for at least 500k, fucking hipsters."  
  
She said that the market was in their favor, Bellamy said that the stars were not.  
  
And at the end of the day, they'd lay on the living room floor devoid of a couch or a coffee table, and talk. With time, they didn't even need bodies as a buffer.  
  
"Want to meet Octavia?"  
  
"Sure."  
  
It was good, it was good, but she looked at the inked stars beneath his bracelet sometimes and he looked at the pendant and all there was was a ticking time bomb right in the middle of the living room.  
  
*  
  
The first was the fight.   
  
Raven slammed the door and hissed for him to get the fuck out.  
  
It was six months since they'd met and it was cold enough to warrant a jacket when he got out of her house.  
  
_"So it's my fault, right?"  
  
"Hell yeah it is, you had no right -"  
  
"It's just a pendant, Raven, all I did was move it out of the way!"  
  
"Do I go around rearranging shit in your apartment?"  
  
"You could."  
  
"Well, I don't!"  
  
"It's always him with you, and that pendant -"  
  
"It's never him with me, you damn coward! All you want to do is fix me or some shit!"  
  
"When did I -"  
  
"It's how you look at me, Bellamy! I am not a thing to be fixed. And I don't even know what the fuck you want from me! I'm fucking trying!"  
  
"Well, try harder! Because this is a joke - you don't even give a shit. Is this a holiday for you? Since we're not soulmates -"  
  
"There you go again with soulmates! Like I care, like I fucking care!"  
  
"But you do! And if this isn't going to work, if you need me to leave, just tell me. I'll go. But don't do this, don't string me along. And I'm not trying to fix you, Raven. I'm trying to know you because we've been together for five months and I don't even know your middle name. Don't try and tell me that you're in it. Don't."  
  
"I'm tired of this. You're like a fucking puppy. Just get out, Bellamy. Leave."  
  
"Raven -"   
  
"Get. the. fuck. out!"_   
  
He was tired, too.  
  
*  
  
Raven didn't call and neither did he. For a while, it was like a fog had lifted. He finished his thesis, took up running, hiked with Octavia and drank with Miller and Murphy.  
  
She was only in his life in the small parts - the toothbrush he'd thrown out a week after, the jar of vaseline she used for when her hands got too calloused after a day in the garage. Bellamy used to rub it in for her.  
  
But she was right and he got that with time, too late to back out now.   
  
His pride was a furious thing, a devastating thing.   
  
It wouldn't let him say he was sorry.

  
  
*  
  
So he did the next best thing.  
  
He unwound the tale of her and the tale of himself, too.   
  
Raven was not a shooting star or a supernova, and he was not a metaphor for a self-made hero the skies loved to hate.  
  
Instead, he was just a grad student with shitty past and she was an engineer in the making who could eat her weight in pasta and make terrible jokes.  
  
And the marks of soulmates they have loved and lost didn't mean a thing. All they signified was how capable of loving they were – horrible lives and all.   
  
The flood water came and it wasn't a clear river - it was waddling through ten inches of thick mud and in his case - pouring rain as he knocked on her door.  
  
Raven opened it in her pajamas, the look on her face showing that she was ready to tell him to fuck off.  
  
He didn't let her, interjecting instead, "I come with gifts."  
  
"Beware of Greeks bearing gifts," she shot back and Bellamy chuckled.  
  
"Thank God I'm not Greek then."  
  
A smile played on her mouth as she opened the door and let him in.  
  
The house was different now, looked more lived-in, books stacked everywhere but on the shelves and mugs assembled on the fireplace in lieu of potpourri and family photos.  
  
Bellamy left the beer on the kitchen counter and Raven waited.  
  
"I'm sorry," he started, both hands in his pockets and cheeks flushing under her stare. "You were right. I was -- I was trying to force you to be something you were not and I am so, so sorry about that."  
  
She had also changed her hair - there were more braids in it now, making her look wilder, happier.  
  
It didn't surprise him when she rolled her eyes. "I don't want your apology."  
  
A beat, and then - "But I could use your beer."  
  
He followed her into the living room and they talked. Talked, really talked, with the copy of Iliad on the couch between them. It was full of dog ears and Bellamy couldn't stop himself from being surprised.  
  
"What? You went on and on about it, I thought I'd see what the fuss was about."  
  
And the night _was_ a barbed wire kind of night but neither of them tiptoed around each other. Because, for all he'd once thought, he never asked about her mother or her injury unless she spoke first, and she never showed interest in his past unless he thought to mention it.  
  
That night was different, in how she led him around and joked deprecatingly about all the shit that took place around the house.  
  
"She'd just flip her shit out of the blue," Raven said about her mother, and Bellamy nodded.  
  
"Mine, too. It could have been anything, a homework, a pair of shoes."  
  
"And I used to have this guinea pig, right, so when he messed up his shit, she'd yell at me until I cleaned it."  
  
"Mine told me that I couldn't get a dog and should take more care of my sister since she was my responsibility."  
  
"Always the responsibility. Our moms were fucking shitpuddles."  
  
"Damn right. But we turned out okay in spite of them."  
  
"We did, didn't we?"  
  
  
*  
  
She didn't give him a tour of her bedroom until the fourth time he came around, this time bringing Thai food and collapsing into her lap as soon as he came in.  
  
Raven laughed, her fingers tracing imaginary lines on his scalp. "Are the kids being tiny assholes again?"  
  
His voice was muffled by her thigh when he replied, "When aren't they? Honestly, I don't think I'm moving ever again. The world can go fuck itself."  
  
"Fine by me. We'll be a weird symbiotic organism. Dude, name for a band!"  
  
She let him sleep over, leading him upstairs with his hand in hers, tripping over the stairs and stumbling into bannisters.  
  
Raven's room smelled like car oil and her skin, mostly. Clothes hung from the door, from the window, and above her bed - a mattress, just a mattress now - hung a tapestry of exploding colors. It burned in red and blue and yellow, a collision of impossible magnitude.  
  
"Clarke made that for you?"  
  
She hummed and sat down, took off her brace.   
  
Bellamy lingered in the doorway - too private to just walk into. It was exactly like the Raven he should have seen all along - Spartan grit, bare knuckled fight, and something beautiful no one would ever expect lurking inside.  
  
He'd been looking for the essence of her in all the wrong places and here it was now - car oil and a mess and a bare mattress for bed. Discarded brace, like shedding her skin and saying she would always be more. A daring look as she took off her top and put on a MIT shirt she slept in.  
  
And the tapestry. Vulgar in its bareness, beautiful in how it could strike a man dead.  
  
"Come on, I won't bite."  
  
That night they were both too tired for anything more than laying down and whispering. Bellamy took the left side, she took the right, and moonlight streamed in through the white window, paint chipping off of it.   
  
"I missed you," he said finally, her fingers tangling in his hair, her legs around his waist. Her breath was warm on his neck and around them, the winter was slowly shifting into what would be a very warm spring.  
  
This was enough, Raven next to him, and some truth, finally. Some resolution. It wouldn't be all good, but it wasn't bad at all.  
  
And Raven kissed the back of his neck, just one feather light kiss as she snuggled closer.  
  
Years later, he'd try to replace what she said then with words that came after, words like "I love you" and "I do" and "I got the position at NASA" but he wouldn't be able to. Some things were meant to sear themselves onto the very fabric of your soul.  
  
And this was one of them, in the dark room, no one but the two of them and the moon as Raven said,  
  
"Of course you did. I am awesome."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading! Kudos & comments make my days better so if you want to make your neighborhood fic writer happy, pls leave them! 
> 
> End notes:
> 
> \- It was immensely important to me, in this story, to show that Bellamy had been wrong about Raven and the things that brought them closer together in the end. The way I went about writing it was in two opposites: Bellamy, who emphasized the importance of what they'd both been through and thought it would bring them closer, and Raven - who was getting over it. 
> 
> \- If anyone's OOC, please let me know how and why. This is my first time writing Braven so I'd love to know and fix it in the future.
> 
> \- If you chuckled at the last line, please let me know, I always appreciate it when people laugh at my wittiness. 
> 
> Thank you again! <3


End file.
